A hair-raising performance by 8 year old Dominique Dy singing the Star Spangled Banner / National Anthem for Nashville Outlaws baseball team at Hawkins Field / Vanderbilt University's (Commodores) baseball stadium in Nashville, Tennessee (TN) on 07/25/2010.

The Nashville Outlaws are a collegiate summer baseball team of the Prospect League. They are located in Nashville, Tennessee, and are named for the city's association with country music, particularly the outlaw country genre which was popular during the late 1960s and 1970s. The team plays its home games at Vanderbilt University's Hawkins Field, which opened in 2002 and holds 3,700 spectators. The Outlaws were established in 2010 as an expansion team of the Prospect League.

Baseball's origins in Nashville, Tennessee have been traced back to as far as 1860.[4] In 1885, the Nashville Americans became the city's first professional baseball team as a charter member of the Southern League. The Vanderbilt Commodores were the city's first collegiate baseball team, beginning play in 1886. Since then, Nashville has been represented by the Blues, Tigers, Seraphs, Vols, Sounds, and Xpress minor league teams. Belmont University, Lipscomb University, and Trevecca Nazarene University operate collegiate programs in the city. The Nashville Outlaws were created in 2010 as an expansion team of the Prospect League.

The Outlaws were founded by three former Nashville Sounds executives: Brandon Vonderharr, Jason Bennett, and Chris Snyder. In addition to sharing ballparks with the Vanderbilt Commodores, the Outlaws also utilize the same black, gold, and white color scheme. The Outlaws are named for the city's association with country music, particularly the outlaw country genre which was popular during the late 1960s and 1970s.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from "Defence of Fort McHenry",[1] a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British drinking song, written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. "The Anacreontic Song" (or "To Anacreon in Heaven"), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. Set to Key's poem and renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", it would soon become a well-known American patriotic song. With a range of one and a half octaves, it is known for being difficult to sing. Although the song has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today, with the fourth ("O thus be it ever when free men shall stand...") added on more formal occasions. In the fourth stanza, Key urged the adoption of "In God is our Trust" as the national motto ("And this be our motto: In God is our Trust").[2] The United States adopted the motto "In God We Trust" by law in 1956.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" was recognized for official use by the Navy in 1889 and the President in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301), which was signed by President Herbert Hoover.

Before 1931, other songs served as the hymns of American officialdom. "Hail, Columbia" served this purpose at official functions for most of the 19th century. "My Country, 'Tis of Thee", whose melody was derived from the British national anthem,[3] also served as a de facto anthem before the adoption of "The Star-Spangled Banner."[4] Following the War of 1812 and subsequent American wars, other songs would emerge to compete for popularity at public events, among them "The Star-Spangled Banner."

O! say can you see by the dawn's early light,What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming.And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?